Filed under: A Bit Of Inspiration, Advertising, Agency Culture, Apple, Attitude & Aptitude, Brand, Brand Suicide, Communication Strategy, Creative Development, Creativity, Culture, Differentiation, Distinction, Technology, Wieden+Kennedy
Apple.
One of the best brands in the world.
From product to marketing … everything they do is considered, consistent and distinctive.
A brand voice forged over years, with a clear understanding of who they are.
But what’s interesting is what they used to be …
Or this …
Or worse of all, this …
I know they’re from a time where long copy wasn’t viewed with the same distain as a global pandemic but look at them?
And what’s with their obsession with mythical figures?
It’s ugly, it’s cluttered, it’s got no clear point of view and it’s talking around the product not at it.
And then, there’s a point in their advertising evolution that you feel they took a clear step towards where they are today with work like this …
And this …
Still a lot of copy. Arguably more.
But it just feels more contemporary …
From being product benefit focused to the choice of font to the voice … which talks to adults like an adult rather than the disinterested, casual, general audience tone they had used before.
It’s so strikingly different that you feel this was the moment Apple understood who they were and who they were for.
It’s also an obviously deliberate act … because there’s no way you would get here from the – let’s be honest – horrible historical figure focused campaigns they’d run before.
Which leads to the point of this post.
A while back I got to hear the wonderful Nils of Uncommon talk.
One of the things he said that particularly resonated with me was brands who say they need to ‘work up’ to the creativity you think they need.
In essence, it’s just their polite way of saying ‘no’ to the work you want them to do.
But the funny thing is that in the main, there’s no valid reason for them to say that, other than them being fearful of change or commitment.
There’s a lot of that at the moment.
Work in an endless loop … seemingly because the people who have the right to sign off on something are scared that the moment they do, they will be judged.
So what happens is the entire industry are caught in arrested development.
And what do agencies do?
Well, in a bid to get anything made, they agree to anything – justifying it as “being a bit better than what they did before” – so we end up with bland and boring campaigns that, bizarrely, keep everyone happy as the agency got to make something and the client doesn’t have to worry of offending anybody.
Said another way, everybody loses with this strategy.
Brand.
Advertising.
Customers.
Industry.
Which is why Nils challenges brands on what they need to do the work they could do.
It’s a test of their truth and ambition.
And he’s right to do that …
Because brands don’t get to where they want through time, but deliberate acts and choices.
Even then it won’t happen overnight … but continually and consistently playing to where you want to be is far smarter than playing to where you hope to be taken.
Because to paraphrase Dan Wieden said … you don’t become the brand you can be by discovering the power of advertising … you do it when you discover the power of your own voice.
Filed under: A Bit Of Inspiration, Advertising, Agency Culture, Attitude & Aptitude, Brand, Brand Suicide, Business, Comment, Communication Strategy, Creative Development, Creativity, Culture, Effectiveness, Management, Marketing, Marketing Fail
A few weeks ago, I saw this …
… and I have to be honest, it’s had me thinking a lot.
Because while I acknowledge you can’t take things for granted, when you get lost in the weeds, you lose sight of what you’re working towards and how you do it.
And a lot of people are doing both of those things.
Nothing sums this up more to me than the issue of attribution.
The quest to minimise risk – or ‘optimise value’ – has resulted in brands forgetting that the easiest way to get attribution is to do something interesting.
But instead – reinforced by industry ‘guru’s – we have ended up with a continual production line of commercially responsible alternatives.
Be a one colour brand.
Place brand assets higher than a brand idea.
And – worse of all – have watermarks in your ads.
While colour and brand assets have a role – albeit not a primary role as so many people seem to suggest – if you feel the only way your brand will be remembered in your commercial is to place your logo all the way through it, then you either don’t know how people work or how advertising does.
Or said another way, you’re admitting your brand and your product are forgettable.
Seriously … why would you do that?
Why would you spend millions on something that positions you as uninteresting.
Worse, why would you spend millions on something that positions you as uninteresting and make sure people know it’s you by ramming your logo down their throat?
But somewhere, someone is measuring the ‘impact’ of this approach and finding a way to demonstrate its effectiveness to clients. Letting everyone feel pleased with themselves. Their choices. Their actions. Creating a precedent others will follow in the blind belief they’re being smarter … more optimised … more effective than all their competitors. All the time consciously and deliberately ignoring the critical fact that it’s undermining them rather than liberating them.
Which leads back to that tweet at the top of the page.
Because while knowing how things are going is important, nothing reveals how lost you are than measuring everything but valuing nothing.
Filed under: A Bit Of Inspiration, Attitude & Aptitude, Content, Creativity, Culture, Perspective, Planners, Planners Making A Complete Tit Of Themselves And Bless
So tomorrow I am off to Croatia to do my Jerry Maguire talk.
That means there will be no posts from me until the 26th.
You lucky, lucky people.
I’ve never been to Croatia, so I’m looking forward to it.
Or I should until I checked the website of the festival and saw the names who will be in attendance and felt massive imposter syndrome … only cranked up to 11 when I saw I was a key note speaker.
Oh jeez.
And if that wasn’t bad enough, I’ll be presenting slides like this:
I know … I know … it sounds like the sort of inner-monologue you’d hear on an episode of Peep Show.
Worse, it sounds like the inner monologue of Mark AND Jez.
I’m doomed … but not a much as the audience in Croatia. Boom Tish.
Have a lovely time without me, see you – very jet-lagged – on the 26th.
[Unless I discover Zdravo doesn’t mean ‘hello’ in Croatian and I’m arrested for indecency]
Filed under: A Bit Of Inspiration, Advertising, Attitude & Aptitude, Culture
There have been a few times in my life where I have felt my brain was full.
Literally.
That to fit anything new in, meant I had to tip something out.
Obviously I now realise that the occasions I felt that way, my mental health was suffering.
Except I didn’t know about mental health back then.
No one did.
Oh I accepted I was stressed.
I appreciated my workload was out of control.
But I thought the only way to deal with it was to deal with it.
Late nights.
Over-consumption of bad food and cans of Diet Coke.
Pretend everything was OK.
Except it wasn’t.
My girlfriend at the time, Jill – now my wife, saw it and told me it was madness. I had to stop.
But I was in a job I didn’t feel I deserved to have … with a new company … in a new country that had zero understanding about work/life balance … in a new relationship where I had taken her from her home country to somewhere totally new where she knew no one … so I felt I needed to show my commitment and ability.
To Jill. To my new colleagues. To myself.
And the worst thing is, I managed to do just that.
I got through it.
Which meant I wrote the episode off as ‘stress’ and ‘workload’ and believed if it happened again, I could deal with it.
Which is exactly what I did.
Or should I say, I thought I did.
Because as I got older, I have felt the scars it left.
Sometimes hidden. Sometimes in plain sight.
And what I came to realise was it was so much more than stress and workload … but burnout.
Not just in terms of physical tiredness.
But mental and emotional.
I was cut adrift from who I was … where living was surviving.
No one should think they can’t take any more new information in.
No one should finish work at 3am and think it’s OK to be up 2 hours later.
No one should think a weekend without any work is uncomfortable.
No one should feel it’s wrong to say, “I need some help” or “I just can’t do this”.
Doesn’t matter if it’s for a month or a week … it’s just stupid.
Ironically, I owe a great deal of thanks to one of the worst clients I’ve ever worked with.
They worked for a major technology company and basically were a total prick.
Treated me like shit.
Demanding things. Expecting things, Dismissing things.
And while all my other clients were great and we were doing great things … this one sucked all the light out of everything. Almost revelled in doing it.
The breaking point came when he asked me to write up some things we had discussed and agreed on, then wrote an email saying it didn’t make sense and I wasn’t paying attention to his requirements … EVEN THOUGH IT WAS WHAT HE HAD SAID WORD FOR WORD.
Bear in mind, this was also the same person who asked me to present to a room full of his team only to tell a colleague of mine that no one spoke English – so it was simply for their amusement.
I had words with them then.
But this time I snapped.
I rang Jill and told her to pack a bag for us, grab our passports and meet me at the office.
I then met Jill downstairs where we went straight to the airport and boarded a plane to Australia where we spent 5 days away from everyone and everything.
I didn’t even tell work until we landed in Sydney and even then it was via an email – including a bunch of evidence of how I, and the agency, had been treated.
Now you may think this is where I tell you I was sacked.
But I wasn’t … because the CEO was – and remains – an absolutely brilliant human.
He was pissed off … but at the client for acting that way and at me for not telling them about it.
And he dealt with them so I felt OK to come back.
What’s interesting is while you may think I would feel embarrassed by my response, I didn’t.
If anything, I felt euphoric.
Oh I’m sure people were talking behind my back, but I didn’t care … because I’d survived.
It had taken too long.
I’d suffered more than I knew.
But I’d survived.
Ironically, it is only relatively recently that I grasped how terrible it was that I felt good about ‘surviving’, when no job should ever make you feel that way.
The only positive of this whole situation was it had such a profound affect on me that I vowed I’d never allow it to happen to me – or others who work with me – again. And I haven’t. Whether a company or client … receiving money for a service doesn’t equate to ownership of your opinions, self-worth or life, it equates to doing what you have been paid to do in a respectful, conscientious, considerate and honest manner.
That’s it.
And if anyone thinks differently – and there’s a lot of those who do – then they’re wrong, regardless how much they try to shift the blame.
Last year I wrote about depression.
I said that while I appreciate the privilege I have being able to talk openly about this – mainly because I am an old white man so any ramifications will still be far less than if I was a woman, a person of colour, non-binary, a member of the LGBTQ+ community or just younger in age – I hoped by doing it, it may normalise it in some way.
That’s why I’m writing this.
No one is immune from mental health challenges.
To have people feel they can’t acknowledge or discuss their situation doesn’t make it go away.
In fact it makes it worse.
There’s countless stories on Corporate Gaslighting that show that.
Which is why if anyone out there feels they’re in a situation where they don’t know how or who to talk to … or suspect they may be entering this cycle and want to talk it out … or are in a situation where they can’t afford to leave their job but their mental health can’t afford to stay … please drop me a line. I am not qualified to help. But I would be very happy to listen.
Filed under: A Bit Of Inspiration, Attitude & Aptitude, Audio Visual, Brand, Comment, Confidence, Context, Craft, Creativity, Culture, Emotion, Experience, Legend, Loyalty, Management, Metallica, Music, Relationships, Relevance, Resonance, Respect, Trust, Truth
Late last year, Metallica launched a new song called LuxEterna, from their upcoming new album, 72.
While it is a brilliant return to their roots, the choice of ‘yellow’ as a key colour was met with some negative commentary from ‘brand purists’.
I don’t mean fans, but brand and design folks.
This was amazing for 2 reasons.
The first is our job is to keep things moving evolving rather than continually replicating what’s gone before, so if anyone should be open minded to change, it’s brand and design folk.
[It also highlights my problem with people who keep banging on about ‘brand assets’, because they are confusing recognition with interesting. Or worse, thinking recognition beats being and doing interesting stuff for audiences]
Secondly, the album was designed – as many have been – by the brilliant folk at the wonderful Turner Duckworth … and given their body of work, if anyone knows about designing modern iconography, it’s them.
But overall, I just found the whole debate amusing.
Metallica have always approached albums as a way to express their current frame of creative mind … and given they always look to inject something new or challenging into their work, the choice of yellow seems the perfect way to communicate ‘next chapter’.
In the case of 27 Seasons – also known as the first 18, and arguably, most significant years of your life – James said this …
“There’s been a lot of darkness in my life and in our career and things that have happened with us … but always having a sense of hope, always having the light that is in that darkness, keeps us moving. Without darkness, there’s no light, and being able to focus a little more on the light instead of how it used to be and how horrible it is, that can only be a good thing. There’s a lot of good things going on in life — focusing on that instead helps to balance out my life. And there’s no one meaning to it — everyone has some sense of hope or light in their life, and, obviously, music is mine.“
When you read that, it’s not hard to work out that the use of yellow is part of a bigger idea around the album rather than a desire to build a one colour brand which some have claimed.
Unsurprisingly, they’re the same people who talk about brand assets like you can just buy them off the shelf rather than make them a byproduct of what you do, so that they have value in them that you also keep building.
By pure chance, I was asked by people connected to the band to do a talk to a music publishing company.
While not specifically related to Metallica, I was asked by someone in the audience for my opinion on their ‘new image’ and whether it risked upsetting their core audience.
I had thought this question may came up, which is why I had prepared an answer.
After informing them I had never known a brand – let alone a band – who knew their audience as well as them … and if you listen to the track, I doubt any of their fans would mistake a revitalised Metallica for Ed Sheeran … I said this.
“If Rock n’ Roll is about rebellion, then surely there’s nothing more rock n’ roll than Metallica using yellow rather than the category norm of black?”
It was met with applause.
And some disgust, hahaha.
But here’s the thing …
Brands – and bands – don’t move forward if all they do is give audiences the same thing over and over again. Nor will they if they just give audiences exactly what they want over and over again. Longevity is as much about keeping people on their toes as it is satisfying their passion and curiosity and you only stand a chance of achieving that by following what interests you, not what interests everyone else.
Metallica get this more than most.
It’s part of the reason they have stayed at the top … because by doing things that interest them, they do things that interests more people rather than just the same people.
As I wrote for MTV years ago, brands can learn a lot from bands … because while brands may think finding shortcuts or disguises allows them to optimise their efficiency, everyone else can tell it’s because they’ve run out of ideas or energy.
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By the way, 72 Seasons comes out tomorrow. This is not a sponsored post. Well, not directly anyway, hahaha.